


The Sun, The Moon, and the Truth

by KaytiKazoo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Curses, M/M, Pack Feels, Post-Season/Series 03A, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaytiKazoo/pseuds/KaytiKazoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the pack gets hit by a truth spell by a vengeful witch and they’re forced to reveal their deepest secret, or else they’re cursed to speak nothing but the truth for the rest of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun, The Moon, and the Truth

The witch just shook her head as Isaac and Scott marched forward, Derek and Allison poised for action, Stiles and Lydia at the back of the pack watching with bated breath, hidden behind the bulk of the werewolves. Aiden and Ethan had, apparently, killed a witch the previous year while under the influence of Deucalion and that witch had a sister and she was pissed.

“We told you to get out of town,” Scott said through his fangs.

“And I told you to fuck off,” she sing-songed. She was pretty in a yellow sundress that complimented her tanned skin, with long brown hair that shone red in the sunshine that streamed through the trees around them. She wasn’t what any of the pack expected, but they all expected Winnie Sanderson or some Disney cartoon witch with a snaggletooth and a wart on her nose. “You know what my price is for me to go. Hand them over and we won’t have a problem.”

“They’re not here,” Scott answered.

“Oh, why are you lying to me, pup? I don’t like it when people lie to me.”

“They left town, I don’t know where they went.”

She let out a heavy sigh and shook her head.

“I just want the murderers. I don’t want to harm your little pup pack.”

“We don’t know where they are,” Isaac said.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she snapped. She turned back to Scott, and raised her eyebrow. “Where are they?”

“I can’t answer you, no matter how many times you ask. I don’t have an answer for you,” Scott said, standing up straight.

“Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

A wicked grin came over the witch’s face, and she lifted her hand up so the palm faced the pack. The wolves heard it perfectly, the Latin words tumbling quickly from her mouth, but couldn’t react quick enough to stop the force of magic from hitting them straight on. They all stumbled back a few steps, and then before anyone could stop her, she had vanished in a swarm of smoke like a performance magician disappearing on stage.

“What the fuck was that?” Stiles asked, rubbing the sore spot on his chest as he helped Lydia from where she had toddled off her heels.

“I don’t know,” Allison answered.

“She said something, I think it might have been Latin, maybe,” Derek said.

“Do you remember what she said? I could translate it.”

Derek nodded and said some words that no one else understood. Lydia paused to think it over.

“Tell the truth of your souls or tell the truth forever,” Lydia said. “Well, that sounds cheery.”

“The truth of our souls?” Isaac asked. “What does that mean?”

“You can’t feel it?” Allison asked in reply, tapping the center of her chest. “I feel this tightness in my chest, and I already know what I want to say.”

“So do I,” Lydia admitted. “She wants us to tell our deepest, darkest secrets, the ones we’ve never told a soul, or else we won’t be able to tell anything but the truth. That’s genius. She wants us to not be able to lie to her the next time we see her.”

“Except if we tell that truth, we’ll be fine, right? How genius can that be?” Isaac asked.

“She’s counting on someone not wanting to spill,” Stiles said. “She’s counting on the fact that we all have things in our past and in our mind that we don’t want to share, and that is the genius part. She knows who she is dealing with, or she’s assuming, but either way, she’s good.”

“Alright, so everyone has to share,” Scott decided. “Time to get into a circle, guys. I want to do a headcount.”

Stiles laughed but followed Lydia, joining the rest of the pack in the circle. Everyone looked a little uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly. Stiles was the first one to sit down, tired from hiking and running through the hilly landscape of the nature preserve in the hot California sun. The rest, save Lydia, followed suit and Stiles pat his lap for her to use to keep leaves and dirt from her designer skirt. She sank into it and rested back against him, her head back against his shoulder.

“Who wants to go first?” Scott asked.

“Why don’t you go first, fearless leader?” Stiles requested, nudging his friend. Scott looked unsure, his cheeks flaring up with embarrassment. Stiles groaned. “Fine, I guess I’ll go. Better to get it out of the way. Don’t want to have to tell the truth forever.”

He took a deep breath.

“On one condition, though. No one gets to use what they hear in this little sob fest against one another, got it?”

They all murmured their assent and Stiles nodded, preparing himself.

“When I was a kid, when my mom was sick, it got really bad towards the end. She hated me, thought I was trying to kill her, even though I was a child, her child. She forgot who I was, and tried to attack me when her paranoia got too bad.”

Scott looked at him.

“That’s not all. I knew that.”

“What you didn’t know, Scotty, is that I was terrified of my mom. You remember my mom, Scott, she was tiny. She was this small, tiny woman, barely capable of lifting a bag of flour. Claudia Stilinski terrified me, made me scared for my life some days, and I hated her those days. The day that she died, while my dad was out working, the last thing I ever said to her was that I hated her and that I’d wished she had died, that I wished the dementia had killed her already. Those were the last words that my lucid mother ever heard from her only son, was that I wanted her dead already.”

Lydia gripped his hand comfortingly. He let out a sigh as he felt the pressure in his chest release.

“Well, hopefully that brings us closer together,” Stiles deadpanned. “Who wants to go next?”

The rest of the pack shifted uncomfortably, looking from one to another.

“I liked being on Gerard’s side, being powerful and dangerous, being deadly. It thrilled me to be able to defend myself, to be able to harm someone,” Allison admitted. “Sometimes I still wish I could be that powerful again. I miss the feeling of being in control, in not being afraid or like I’m just another damsel looking for some distress to fall in. I want it back, even though I know I did some awful things.”

Scott nodded at Allison reassuringly, even though Isaac’s face was scrunched up in a kind of disgust. Allison had stabbed him during her stint as Gerard’s little puppy, so that was a fair face to make.

She felt the same tension in her own chest release, and she leaned back in relief. She shared a look with Stiles who smiled at her.

The group sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Fuck it,” Lydia said. “I don’t want to have to be honest with everyone. I wasn’t just trying to be popular when I played dumb.”

She took a second, pausing before she continued.

“It wasn’t just about being the most powerful girl in school, about being the girl that every girl wanted to be and every guy wanted to date. It wasn’t, it wasn’t always that, that power-hungry. I’ve been self-conscious about my intelligence since I was a little girl. My grandmother always tried to teach me that I should never dumb myself down, that any guy who didn’t want me because I was smarter than them was not a guy that I want, but I was always so scared that I wouldn’t be good enough for them if they found out. What guy would want to date a girl who can out-smart them every time? I was scared that no one would like me, that no _guy_ would like me, so I just let everyone believe I was dumb. It’s so shallow, but I couldn’t let anyone know. Until Stiles, at least.”

The knot of pressure inside Lydia released, and she felt at peace. Stiles bumped his shoulder forward against hers and she let out a small, thankful laugh, bumping back against him.

“Okay, so let’s move on. Isaac, you’re up.”

“What? Why me?” Isaac yelped.

“Because I said so. Now go on.”

“I fucking hate this.” He let out a heavy sigh, but squared his shoulders as if preparing himself. “When Derek gave me the Bite, the first thing I wanted to do was scare the hell out of my dad. I wanted to show him that I wasn’t going to just take what he was doing anymore, that I could fight back. I wanted to show him that nothing he did could hurt me anymore. But I couldn’t do it. So when Jackson, the kanima, killed him, I was so relieved. That’s so wrong to say, that I was glad my dad was dead, but I couldn’t deal with the freezer, and I couldn’t actually hurt my father, no matter what he’s done, so I was relieved that I didn’t have to deal with him or deal with getting away from him. I could actually enjoy my life, which makes me an awful person, but I guess that’s what you get when your father turns out to be an awful person, too.”

Isaac felt the same pressure loosen and fade, and he closed his eyes.

“So, who’s next?” Isaac asked, glancing between Scott and Derek.

They stared each other down, as if daring the other to go first. Scott made a _floor’s all yours_ motion, which Derek shook his head and gestured back as if to say _no, you go ahead_.

“Come on, guys,” Stiles said. “Scott, just spill it. We’ve all said some horrible shit tonight; there’s nothing you can say that will make us hate or despise you. We’re all in the same boat. The truth shall set you free.”

“Fuck off,” Scott muttered.

“Don’t be difficult, Scotty. Let’s go. Spill the beans, bro.”

Scott sighed.

“Okay. Ever since I was bitten, I’ve been scared, and not just because there has been something trying to kill us since that night. It doesn’t have anything to do with the running for our lives. I’m afraid that I’m not capable of leading the pack, of keeping us alive. I’m not good enough for all of you. I’m not strong or smart enough to protect this pack, and when I fail, when someone dies, it’s going to be my fault. I don’t deserve to be an alpha, let alone a true alpha. I’m weak, and inexperienced, and I’m not _good_ enough to be a true alpha. Most days, I just wish I had never been bitten, or at least that I’d remained a beta. I don’t have the strength or the ability to be an alpha, not the kind that we need, at least.”

Scott visibly relaxed as he felt the knot under his breastbone fall away into nothing. Just getting this off his chest after harboring it for long, tiring months, was enough to be a relief, but the physical relief of having the spell cast off him was an added bonus. This left only Derek, but he didn’t seem to want to budge from his silence. The pack tried to trick, wheedle, and sweet-talk him into fessing up, but his tongue remained tied.

“Dude, you can tell us anything,” Stiles said almost softly. Derek’s cheeks and ears began to burn with the attention. Stiles looked around and nodded to himself. “Lydia, I need to get up.”

Lydia stood and Stiles followed, and he headed over to Derek.

“Come on, big guy. Let’s go talk in private.”

He held out his hand to Derek, who took it carefully, and Stiles hauled him to his feet. He led them into the wooded preserve far enough that Scott and Isaac wouldn’t be able to hear them, but close enough that they could get back without a problem. It wouldn’t matter if they did get lost, to be honest, since Derek had grown up with this preserve as his backyard. Lost in Beacon Hills Nature Preserve is not truly lost when you’re a Hale, he figured.

“Okay, this is good,” Stiles said, sitting down a large flat rock and patting the rock beside him. Derek sat down and studied their shoes, Derek wearing his usual boots while Stiles was wearing running sneakers, his laces done up in loose, ineffective loops. Stiles nudged Derek gently with his elbow.

“Come on, man, tell me what’s up?”

“I can’t,” Derek replied. “It’s not- you wouldn’t-”

He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

“This is gonna sound stupid,” he admitted. “But I guess, if I have no other choice.”

Stiles sat still, for once, and just listened.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out. Hell, I didn’t even _want_ you to find out. Not that I don’t think you deserve to know, but, this is hard. How do I even go about this?”

“Band-aid it, dude.”

“Alright, well, I think I’m in love with you.”

That wasn’t what Stiles was expecting, silence only following as a reply. The quiet seemed to spur Derek on instead of deter him, the pressure in his chest beginning to release with every word.

“I think I love you, and I’m sorry. I don’t deserve you in any way. Everything that’s gone wrong in my life is because of me and my decisions, and I can’t ask you to be with me because of that. I killed Paige, and my entire family is dead because I trusted the wrong woman, and Laura is dead because I let her go off alone instead of being a decent brother, and if we were together, I cannot guarantee that you would be safe. After everything we’ve been through, you deserve to be safe, because you’ve somehow kept us all alive even though you’re only human. You saved my life when you didn’t have to, when it put you in danger as well, and I don’t know when it happened, but I fell in love with you.”

He shook his head.

“I let Jennifer get close, and she killed so many people,” he said softly. “How could I ever deserve you?”

Stiles looked up and over at him.

“I’m not some innocent kid, you know. I’ve done shit that I’m not proud of, clearly. Between the two of us, Derek, you are by far the better person. I am so selfish. I saved the people I care about, and if I happened to save other people, then bonus. My first response to things is resorting to violence, and sarcasm. There’s nothing about me that would make you not deserve me. If anything, I don’t deserve you.”

Derek’s eyes widened, and he stuttered.

“Look,” Stiles said, cutting Derek off, “I’ve had a major crush on you since I first saw you in the preserve. Do you remember that day? I saw you, and you were massively hot, like you were a fucking supernova star and it hurt to look at you, you were so attractive. And it didn’t help that when I got to know you, you were smart, and witty, and gave as good as you got, and you were good in a way that I could never even hope to be. We’ve both fucked up, that’s undeniable, but why should that mean we don’t get to be happy? And I want us to be happy, especially if that means with each other.”

Derek was quiet as Stiles finished, lips pulled down slightly and his eyebrows furrowed. Stiles, feeling bold, leaned in and pressed a small, chaste kiss to that frown and then pulled away before Derek could respond.

“We don’t have to do anything about this now, but I would like to talk to you more about this, if you’re willing.”

Derek, as a reply, took Stiles’ hand and gave him a small kiss on the knuckles.

“I’m willing, if you are.”

“Alright, come on, big guy. Let’s get back before they think we’ve gotten lost or something.”

***

The witch returned a few days later, waiting for the pack in the middle of the lacrosse field. She had a smug smirk on her face, like she knew all the answers to all the questions, like she’d won the lottery right after someone told her she was never going to win.

“Well, well,” she sang at them. “How has your week been?”

“Good, actually,” Stiles said. “How was yours?”

The smirk fell into a frown as she studied him.

When she didn’t answer, Stiles muttered, “Alright then, rude.”

“We still don’t know where Aiden and Ethan are,” Scott said before Stiles could anger her any further. “They left, and we haven’t seen them in months.”

The frown deepened.

“You shouldn’t be able to lie to me,” she muttered to herself. “So you must be telling the truth. But why would an alpha not know where his pack is?”

“They’re not pack,” Scott answered. “We have no associations with them, not anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes and stalked closer to him, sticking her finger straight in his face.

“Are you _lying_ to me, pup? Because if I find out you are lying to me-”

“I haven’t been able to lie in two days,” he said. “You can test me yourself, if you like. I have nothing to hide anymore.”

She studied him for a while before letting out an angry huff.

“Very well. I will just have to find the mutts somewhere else.”

With that, she stamped her foot, and disappeared again in an explosion of grey smoke, leaving the pack coughing.

“Like it or not, she makes one hell of an exit,” Stiles said. Derek chuckled and looped his hand into Stiles’. “Besides, without her, we wouldn’t be so close now.”

“I would like to know you guys less than I do now,” Isaac said, heading to the bag where he’d dropped his lacrosse gear. “Now are we going to play or are you guys going to talk about your feelings some more?”

The pack sprinted back to their belongings and swept up lacrosse sticks from the ground, laughing and yelling trash talk at one another. Scott looked at his pack as he opened the ball container he’d borrowed from Coach Finstock, and smiled, because unknowingly, that witch had done a lot more good for this pack than she had intended. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, the truth really could set you free.

**Author's Note:**

> So this story idea has been sitting in my folder for a few years, and I told Best Friend Meredith (hey you!) about how I had this story idea that I had titled The Sun, The Moon, and the Truth (which fun fact, I named it that before the show used the quote) and she's like, you should write it! Soooo, I did.   
> If you liked it, make sure you kudos, comment, and bookmark it! If you REALLY liked it, go ahead and share it with your friends, and if you want to talk to me about anything, I can be found at deputy-heart-eyes.tumblr.com!
> 
> DFTBA  
> -K


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